Guillermo Fadanelli
Guillermo Fadanelli was born in Mexico City in 1963. He studied engineering and worked, among other things, as a real estate agent and muleteer, as a Christmas tree vendor in New York and at a confectionary shop in Madrid. He began his literary career in 1988 and in 1989 founded the underground Mexico City journal “Moho”, of which is he is editor in chief, before shortly afterwards self-publishing his first novel, “Cuentos Mejicanos” (1991; t: Mexican Tales) in Madrid. The short story collection “El día que la vea la voy a matar” (1992; t: The day I see her I will kill her) came out in Mexico. Since then he has published a large number of novels and stories, some of them at the eponimously named Moho publishing house he founded in 1995. Fadanelli writes for several magazines and fanzines in Mexico, Spain and Chile. There are two blogs by Fadanelli, one is at www.fadanelli.blogspot.com, in which some of his stories are published; and the other one is at www.moho.ws, where he pr esents examples of his publications and magazines. He has, in addition, emerged as a video artist and translator from French.
Fadanelli is considered a cult writer for Latin America’s young generation. In a fresh, irreverent tone he describes life in Mexico City in a drastic and unsentimental way. “In Fadanelli’s stories crude language and situations that take place on the knife’s edge are devoid of all rhetorical emphasis and ceremonious trappings in order to enter into mere necessity,” wrote critic Sergio González Rodríguez. “La otra cara de Rock Hudson” (1997; t: Rock Hudson’s other face) depicts in a little over a hundred pages a s pr ightly, anxious young man’s transformation into a gangster and pr ovides a portrait of a debauched metropolis. The vicious circle of drugs, pr ostitution and violence is pr esented in a low key, artful manner in which the opening and closing scenes parallel one another: the young man who observes a killer and drug dealer with abhorrence and fascination evolves, unremarked, into his successor and spitting image. Fadanelli was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura and the IMPAC CONARTE ITESM for his novel. In his novel “Lodo” (2002), honoured by the Premio Nacional de Literatura Colima and nominated for the renowned Rómulo Gallegos Prize, Fadanelli tells the story of an old, cynical philosophy pr ofessor who pr ovides a hiding place for a young murderess whom he desires. Most recently Fadanelli published the novel “Educar a los topos” (2006; Educating the moles), about the education of young children at a military school in the imploding Mexico City of the early seventies.
Fadanelli’s novels “¿Te veré en el desayuno?” (1999; t: Will I see you at breakfast?) and “Clarisa ya tiene un muerto” (2000; t: Clarissa already has a dead man) have been made into films. The author is currently a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin pr ogramme (2007/08) of the German Academic Exchange Service.
© international literature festival berlin
El día que la vea la voy a matar
Grijalbo
Mexiko, 1992
Regimiento Lolita
Times Editores
Mexiko, 1998
¿Te veré en el desayuno?
Plaza y Janés
Mexiko, 1999
Clarisa ya tiene un muerto
Mondadori
Barcelona, 2000
Más alemán que Hitler
Cal y Arena
Mexiko, 2001
Lodo
Plaza y Janés
Mexiko, 2002
Compraré un rifle
Anagrama
Barcelona, 2004
Das andere Gesicht Rock Hudsons
Matthes & Seitz
Berlin, 2004
[Ü: Sabine Giersberg]
Educar a los topos
Anagrama
Barcelona, 2006
En busca de un lugar habitable
Almadía
Oaxaca de Juárez, 2006
Un scorpion en février
Christian Bourgois
Paris, 2006
Malacara
Editorial Anagrama
Barcelona, 2007
Übersetzer: Sabine Giersberg